mr. gordo wrote:Does anyone know if there's a Mahayana/Vajrayana Equivalent to accesstoinsight.com? Sort of like an online abhidharmakosha?

not yet.I might say that i think its a good thing that there isnt.Although access to information is a good thing it isnt difficult to find people taking things out of context on Access to Insight and posting them all over the internet in order to support their own views. I'm not a fan of access to insight personally.

mr. gordo wrote:Does anyone know if there's a Mahayana/Vajrayana Equivalent to accesstoinsight.com? Sort of like an online abhidharmakosha?

not yet.I might say that i think its a good thing that there isnt.Although access to information is a good thing it isnt difficult to find people taking things out of context on Access to Insight and posting them all over the internet in order to support their own views. I'm not a fan of access to insight personally.

Really? How can they take things from Access To Insight out of context?

I began encountering sutras from about 12 or 13 on and Buddhism from about 10 on and have always thought that access to basic teaching is very important now. Of course people can twist things for their own views, etc. but it's more difficult to do in the sutta teachings.

I think it is an excellent idea, and if anyone here has the means to create, instigate or participate in such a project, then I would encourage them to pursue that possibility, as it will be a great blessing to Buddhists across the globe.

In the meantime perhaps, someone (perhaps even Dharma Wheel members collectively?) could take up the slightly lesser challenge of creating a Mahayana/Vajrayana equivalent of the Google Saffron Theravada Search Engine.

mr. gordo wrote:Does anyone know if there's a Mahayana/Vajrayana Equivalent to accesstoinsight.com? Sort of like an online abhidharmakosha?

not yet.I might say that i think its a good thing that there isnt.Although access to information is a good thing it isnt difficult to find people taking things out of context on Access to Insight and posting them all over the internet in order to support their own views. I'm not a fan of access to insight personally.

Really? How can they take things from Access To Insight out of context?

I began encountering sutras from about 12 or 13 on and Buddhism from about 10 on and have always thought that access to basic teaching is very important now. Of course people can twist things for their own views, etc. but it's more difficult to do in the sutta teachings.

Kirt

i've seen people use cut and paste jobs from accesstoinsight that are used to put forth some pretty wacky arguments. The new buddhist forum stands out as one where this kind of thing goes on unchecked, among other things.

Creating anything similar to ATI in English is quite difficult. First of all there are copyright issues. Mahayana sutras have been translated by a large number of translators and groups. But you can find a lot around the Web if you know where to go. Plus Mahayana is a lot more diverse than Theravada.

On the other hand, you cannot get almost any Abhidhamma material online even though many of them are translated by PTS.

"There is no such thing as the real mind. Ridding yourself of delusion: that's the real mind."(Sheng-yen: Getting the Buddha Mind, p 73)

Unfortunately it seems that most academic work that is conducted in Japan is limited to print material. Even annotated and translated texts, which should be freely available, are kept as print versions for the most part. The popular translators of sutras like Nakamura Hajime for example all published their work for the commercial market, so copyrights all apply and the company won't make it digitally available.